Human rights campaigners in Russia said on Saturday that they were prepared to defend themselves in court after Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he was suing them for claiming he is a murderer.
Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights organization, said he stood by remarks he made last week after the killing of journalist Natalia Estemirova.
Estemirova, 50, was abducted last Wednesday from her home in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. Her body was discovered in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. She had been shot in the head and chest.
Estemirova worked for Memorial in Grozny for nearly a decade and documented extrajudicial killings, disappearances and other human rights abuses in the Muslim republic under Kadyrov’s rule.
She was a close friend of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist and Kremlin critic who was shot dead in Moscow in October 2006.
Speaking after Estemirova’s killing, Orlov took the rare step of alleging Kadyrov was her murderer.
“We know who is responsible. We know what position he occupies. His job is Chechen president,” Orlov told a press conference in Moscow.
He said Kadyrov had threatened Estemirova last year and his aides had warned her to stop her human rights work or face the consequences.
Kadyrov denies involvement. He claims Estemirova’s killing was an attempt to “discredit” Chechnya and Ingushetia.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has rejected the allegations against Kadyrov, branding them “primitive and unacceptable.”
Estemirova’s murder has provoked international outrage.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Kremlin to clarify the circumstances. During a visit to Germany, Medvedev promised the killers would be caught and held to account — a claim most observers treat with skepticism.
So far in similar cases, including that of Politkovskaya, nobody has been punished.
Yesterday Orlov said he would not be intimidated by Kadyrov’s legal action. He said he had no direct proof of Kadyrov’s guilt, but said that as a Kremlin-appointed president he bore overall responsibility for events in Chechnya.
“I am ready to appear before the court if there is a trial and to answer for the words I spoke,” he told Russian news agency Interfax.
There is little prospect that Kadyrov would lose a legal battle, since Russia’s courts invariably do what they are told. But the case threatens to heap further damage on the reputation of the Kremlin, for which Kadyrov — a former rebel turned pro-Moscow loyalist — is now a spectacular embarrassment.
Moscow, however, regards him as an indispensable partner and the one leader capable of keeping the lid on a spiraling insurgency across the North Caucasus.
Activists say it is no longer sustainable for Kadyrov to claim that his enemies are responsible for killing his enemies — a strategy used every time a journalist, liberal activist or lawyer opposed to Kadyrov is gunned down in Russia.
“You can’t keep on making this claim. It’s no longer believable,” said one source close to Novaya Gazeta, the paper for which Estemirova also wrote.
On Friday Novaya Gazeta pointed the finger of blame at Kadyrov. In a long article, it recounted the grim circumstances surrounding Estemirova’s execution, saying that the white car used to abduct her had been waved through several police checkpoints — only possible if her kidnappers had an official ID.
Chechen exiles have alleged that Kadyrov has drawn up a top-secret death list of his enemies.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS